Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the Democratic National Committee of neglecting the Israel-Gaza war in the newly released post-election autopsy on Wednesday. According to Ocasio-Cortez, the report’s failure to address the war in the region undermines the integrity of the analysis of the 2024 election.
Comprised of 190 pages and relying on numerous interviews and internal analyses, the report discusses factors behind Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss to former President Donald Trump. It talks about the timing of the election and voters’ preferences. Yet the Gaza crisis is not even mentioned, nor are there any efforts to put pressure on the Democrats on the issue.
“I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said during a press conference. “I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major threat that was happening in 2024, regardless of how one feels about that issue.”
Ocasio-Cortez claims that the Gaza war could not have been overlooked by presidential candidates, particularly young voters.
“For young people, it was a huge part of the environment,” she continued. “I can tell you for myself as a candidate during that cycle, there’s no way that it was an ignorable issue or totally immaterial.”
In contrast with other previous reports, this analysis ignores the impact the Gaza war had on the electoral defeats of Democrats among Arab Americans and young voters. The representative of the Progressive Caucus describes this exclusion as “a real disservice.”
Ocasio-Cortez is not the only Democrat who shares this opinion. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and other Democrats believe that the document understates a critical aspect of the party’s losses in 2024.
